There was O'Neal'sBaloon across fromLincolnCenter – an old law still on the books that year prohibited calling a place a saloon, and they didn't know that when they ordered thesign, so they changed the first letter and said the hell with it. I'd stop in once in a while during the afternoon, but it was too trendy and upbeat at night. There wasAntares and Spiro's, a Greek place at the corner of Ninth and Fifty-seventh. Not really my kind of place, a lot of guys with bushy moustaches drinking ouzo, but I passed it every night on the way home and sometimes I'd stop in for a quick one.
There was the all-night newsstand at the corner of Fifty-seventh and Eighth. I generally bought the paper there, unless I bought it from the shopping-bag lady who hawked them on the sidewalk in front of the 400 Deli. She bought them for a quarter each from the newsstand- I think they were all a quarter that year, or maybe the News was twenty cents- and she sold them for the same price, which is a tough way to make a living. Sometimes I'd give her a buck and tell her to keep the change. Her name was Mary Alice Redfield, but I never knew that until a couple of years later, when someone stabbed her to death.
There was a coffee shop called the Red Flame and there was the 400 Deli. There were a couple of okay pizza stands, and there was a place that sold cheese steaks that nobody ever went to twice.
There was a spaghetti joint called Ralph's and a couple of Chinese restaurants. There was a Thai place that SkipDevoe was crazy about. There was Joey Farrell's onFifty-eighthStreet – they'd just opened the past winter. There was, hell, there were a lot of joints.